Monday, July 03, 2006

Where Are Our Hemingways, Our Faulkners?

Who are today's leading young novelists, asks Lev Grossman in the venerable Time magazine. After rounding up the usual suspects -- from Safran Foer to Lethem to Franzen to Foster Wallace, with a tip of the hat to those across the Atlantic such as David Mitchell -- he concludes that today's novel is shorter, funnier and more tightly plotted. And yet:

"...there's still no writer under 40 who makes you want to stand up in a crowded theater and shout, That right there is the voice of this generation, that is the yearning and the rage of the contemporary...Every once in a while a novel comes along that makes everything else feel dated, that feels as current as tomorrow's e-mail, that gives readers the story of their own secret ineffable desperation with such immediacy that it induces spontaneous mass recognition as the Voice. Every once in a while--but not lately."

On reflection, it looks like it's the same old 'Great American Novel' debate in a different guise.

And here's an instruction manual on how to write it: make sure to include migration, individualism, optimism, religion, informality and expansiveness.